Clifford Jones patronised Jo Grant when she first met him by telling her to go and make some coffee. Annoyed, she asked him sarcastically and a touch maliciously if a cup of arsenic would do, but Jones was too absorbed in his work to pay attention to her or catch the jab at his rude attitude. (TV: The Green Death) The Third Doctor treated Sarah Jane Smith the same way when they first met, asking her to "make [herself] useful" and make coffee. She informed him that he she would not be spending her time fetching coffee and so the Doctor made himself a cup. (TV: The Time Warrior)

The Second Doctor often preferred coffee to tea. He once struggled through a cup of UNIT's AAFI tea that he called "execrable" and later found an abandoned cup of cold coffee, drinking it with relish. (PROSE: The Invasion) This incarnation was more enthusiastic with coffee than food; he demonstrated a casual need for nourishment but a desire for coffee. When only a coffee pellet was available he accepted on the grounds that it was "better than nothing." (TV: The Wheel in Space)

In the West Country Children's Home in the mid-1990s, the Twelfth Doctor questioned Reg on how sometimes when everybody's coffee was put down and they looked around, it wasn't there. When Reg looked around, both the Doctor and the mug of coffee was gone. In fact, the Doctor had taken the coffee to drink it. (TV: Listen)